It seems almost everybody like Jesus. He honored in pop culture, revered in every major religion in the world, and honored even among the most irreverent. You’ll be hard pressed to find people who don’t like Jesus or see him positively in some light.

However, Christians go beyond liking, respecting, or honoring him. We worship Him. It’s good to ask, why?

The letter to the Hebrews gives four clear answers that supremely important question, “Why do Christians worship Jesus?”

We Worship Jesus Because He Reveals God.

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1-2a).

The God of the Bible is a talker. From Genesis 1 to the very end, God is always speaking to his people. In the Old Testament, God’s normal way of speaking was through his anointed and authorized messengers, the prophets. But, in these last days of God’s saving work, he has spoken perfectly and finally “by his Son.” The prophets of the Old Testament all pointed forward to the one final Prophet who would give us God’s final Word because He is God’s final word. That is, in all the Bible, God says everything he wants to say through the person (who Jesus is) and work (what Jesus did) of His Son.

If you want to know what God is like, what God desires, and what God is doing and will do in the world, then “fix your eyes on Jesus” (Heb. 12:1-2). Jesus is the one-stop-shop of everything God wants you to know about everything.

He has spoken by His Son and nothing and no one outside of Jesus as He’s revealed in the Scriptures is ultimately needed.

We Worship Jesus Because He Is God.

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” (Heb. 1:2).

How can we lay such a burden upon a mere man? We couldn’t. No mere man is capable of revealing all that God has to say. In many ways, even the best of men fail to reveal or reflect the character and plan of God. But, Jesus is no mere man. He is the eternal God in human flesh. Everything God is, Jesus is. He is true God of true God. Just like you can’t separate radiant heat from the sun’s fire, you cannot separate Jesus from the nature of God. Just as the mold that presses the same picture on every coin is forms, so Jesus perfectly represents the exact character of God. If you want to know what God is exactly like, look at Jesus because He is exactly God.

We worship Jesus because He is the one true God worthy of our worship. God has not just spoken to us. Nor has God just saved us. But God speaks to us and saves us because He has come to us in Jesus Christ.

We Worship Jesus Because He Reconciles Us to God.

“After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb 1:3).

All people know that we’re deeply broken and in need of salvation. Though many are confused about what exactly is broken within us, the Scriptures are clear that, at the heart, all of our greatest maladies have their sole root in sin; our intentional breaking of or weak inability to uphold God’s beautiful Law. We are criminals against the one true God by doing what we should not do or failing to do what we should.

However, though we are unable in our own strength to pay for our crimes or make up for them by perfectly obeying God from this point forward, the good news of the Bible is that God has done for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Jesus has made purification for all our sins by his substitutionary death on the cross. The work we couldn’t even begin to do, Jesus finished at the cross (John 19:28-30). So perfect was his saving work that, after he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, he “sat down” (Heb. 1:3), showing that his work was complete and there was nothing left for us to do about our sins other than receive his gift of salvation by trusting He buried them and left them buried.

We worship Jesus because He did for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He bridged the infinite chasm that separated us from God and now, in Him, we have access to God and the freedom to approach his throne boldly knowing that we’re accepted by God because “Jesus paid it all” (Hebrews 10:19-25).

We Worship Jesus Because He Rules As God.

“(Jesus) sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.” (Heb. 1:3b-4).

Jesus’ saving work didn’t end there, but now, as the risen Savior, Jesus sits enthroned to rule over us as the eternal God-Man. Everyday, we Christians look to our Enthroned King to provide what we need, to protect us from every danger, and to empower us to live for him until He takes us home or until He brings home to back to us. We don’t worship a dead Savior, but a Savior who lives and rules daily from His peerless throne.

We worship Jesus because He is the King all our hearts yearn for. He is the King mighty enough to vanquish our greatest enemies. He is the King rich enough to supply us our every need. He is the King loving enough to ceaselessly work for our increasing joy. We worship Jesus because He rules as no man ever has or ever can. He alone is the ruler who perfectly uses his power not to crush us, but lift us up.

Everyone like Jesus. Every religion respects him. Almost everybody honors Him in some way. But, one of the ways Christians are weird is that we worship Him because we believe, by the testimony of Scripture, that He is the eternal God whose come to earth to be our perfect revealing Prophet, reconciling Priest, and ruling King forever.

There really ain’t no one like Him, so we think that worship is the only proper response.